Monday, November 16, 2009

FH14 asks on twitter: "any updates on LG15 Italy/Japan, any at all, that you can give to us patient LG15 fans?"

LG15 first reported in March 2009 on EQAL's announcement of a licensing deal with Shinto Tsushin to distribute dubbed versions of Lonelygirl15 and KateModern in Japan. In June, Greg Goodfried updated fans to let them know that "we licensed LG15 to a Japanese company, so lonelygirl15 and KateModern will find a whole new life with a Japanese audience, and they might produce a local version of LG15 for Japan."

Deals like this, however, can take lots of time to come to fruition.

A bit farther back, EQAL first announced on June 4, 2008 a partnership with Italy-based M.A.D. Entertainment to create an Italian-language lonelygirl15 spinoff. Subsequent to that announcement, the Polish lonelygirl15 spinoff n1ckola has come and gone, though a second season of n1ckola may materialize at some future date.

13 comments:

Would this be a good moment to note The Last's site has been down for 45 days, and there's no sign that's gonna change anytime soon?

I fully support FH poking and prodding EQAL, but at some point, realism has to set in...

...they don't give a shit.

I mean, look at Inside - with everything that has been and should be going on - site relaunch, TSIY selection process, integration of other LG15 series into the site, maybe a little more detail about how TSIY2 will work out in terms of interaction (considering the one-week-buffer and rumors chat will be replaced), there still hasn't been a post since September 21st.And that post only exists because we repeated the questions over and over here.

Had we just silently swallowed their previous refusal to communicate, the latest Inside post would be from August 31st - two and a half months ago. The LG15 Twitter hasn't even announced the end of the TSIY submission period, let alone the winner.

Sure, Miles has posted on lg15.com, but what did he really post? The first and the last post were actually written. All other posts are a boilerplate intro, pre-generated video embed code, and a copy-paste of the video's description. Total effort: Practically 0. Probably took less than a minute to prepare those posts, and any automated script could've done the same.

I guess what I'm trying to say is: While FH14's question and it's good to be asked, it's not broad enough. Mysterious failed business endeavors are interesting to ask about, but there are other questions which impact the community far more directly that need answers:* When are the other series going to be integrated into LG15.com?* What's the current franchise planning? Should we expect TSIYs indefinitely, or do you consider it a realistic possibility that EQAL-produced LG15 will return one day?* It's obvious LG15 is not a priority anymore. Does it have any importance at all for EQAL anymore, or should we expect the situation to become worse over time?* What about site stability? Is LG15.com being updated concurrently with the other Umbrellas, or do we have to expect another site wipe next fall? With no activity or interest at all from EQAL, do we have to fear the site itself will just vanish next year?* In the latest Inside post, they announced "We will be using a Creative Commons non-commercial share-like license for all of the LG15 content"; what's the status of that? Legal clarity would at least allow the community to continue the Breeniverse no matter what EQAL does or what happens to the site.

And if they were nice, just to show us they still know we exist, they could post a little update about Outbreak - they have supposedly been working with Mason for two weeks now (as per the announcement post) - what's the status? Do they like what they see? How strong is the LG15-connection? How excited should we be?

I fully support FH14's question (not that I think you'll get an answer...at least not without additional pressure), I just think if we try to get answers about LG15 from EQAL, we should ask about things that affect the community more directly.

Whether Italy and Japan will never happen will be interesting to know, but it won't affect us much. The question of whether The Last's complete site, with all the character interaction, puzzle clues & solving, and as a gateway to the series as whole is gone is something that affects us much more directly.

Please don't take this as me scolding FH14 or anything of the like - quite the opposite: I'm trying to encourage more questions. More pestering, if need be. What happened to announced franchises is only one of many questions left open by EQAL, and guessing from their communication over the past year, if we don't ask them, and ask them a lot, we're not gonna get any answers.

So, in summary: I suggest we all re-tweet FH's question for broader effect, and then add some more.

Is it possible that inside has been replaced by the home page for LG15.com which they described as the blog for the LG15 Universe.

There certainly has been a lack of communication which is quite contrary to what Miles and Greg promised. Who exactly is handling LG15 for Eqal now. In another thread a comment suggested that Amanda has left LG15 behind. Miles is running the company...... or so we suppose. Greg seems to have his focus on Paula Deen. So, who does that leave as the point person for LG15?

If Inside had been deprecated, would it not have made sense to shut it down when all other lg15.com pages went down?

...or at least to post a post "don't check Inside anymore, we're using LG15.com from now on"?...or to post something to that effect in the introduction post on the new new LG15.com?

There is no indication Inside's status has changed anywhere. In fact, Inside is still linked to from the header of LG15.com, pointing to it still being (intended to be) current.

Even if Inside was officially dead...a lack of communication about where the lack of communication happens in the future is not exactly making things better.

(And for those wondering how this is all on topic: FH14's almost desperate carpet-bombing of accounts with that question is a direct result of EQAL's lacking communication. If they talked to us regularly and updated us on the franchise, neither FH14's question nor this blog post would exist. Improving their communication in general would result in an answer to the particular issue at hand as well.)

How convenient...just as I have a working counter, the site hides behind a BRB sign...

Let's see what they're doing now.

Model, assuming you're up for inserting counters, would you like me to pre-style them, or just add classes to let you style them?

And I currently have them showing days, hours, minutes, updating on refresh...do you want them self-updating even without refresh?

Oh, and looking at outstanding issues, I remembered another communication should-be for EQAL: No lying.Lying to us about the reason for technical issues or glitches, or about their complexity, really should be a no-no. Miles, in particular, is guilty of that. (Both about the complexity of fixing an HTML link, and about the complexity of fixing the video/navbar overlay problem.)